The case for banning children from social media • Hacker News Board

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#51

Post by andy_ppp » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 1:15 AM UTC

atahanacar wrote: post #39

andy_ppp wrote: post #19

It’s essentially manipulation of the dopamine system in the exact same way as casinos except it’s worse because it uses AI to really start personalising what keeps us hooked. Would you let your children become addicted to gambling?

If you don't want your children to become addicted to something, be a good parent and monitor them. It is not the government's or the society's responsibility to babysit your kids. I don't want my freedoms taken away from me (in this case, freedom to anonymously use social media) just because some people don't have the capability or the motivation to parent their kids properly. Also, this "what about the children" th…

But society stops minors from doing all sorts of harmful behaviors, like drinking, drugs, gambling, guns etc. I think we should consider limiting the algorithms applied to teenagers at least to being much simpler and maybe not allow personal information to be used. I don't think this is some loss of freedom we need to worry about.

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#52

Post by PragmaticPulp » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 1:17 AM UTC

C50VGicCxmHC wrote: post #3

> These bills will likely face considerable constitutional challenges. Previous attempts to block minors from accessing Web sites via broad legislation, including the Child Online Protection Act, from 1998, have been struck down on First Amendment grounds. You might get farther instead of banning children from social media, ban all ads to children on social media. Every single ad impression shown to a child is a $1,0…

Always baffling to see suggestions like this on HN:

> Every single ad impression shown to a child is a $1,000 fine.

> If you do that, social media companies will figure out how to keep kids from accessing their site.

Do you really want to live in a world where every website forces you to log in and verify your state-issued ID?

I think some people see the words “social media” and assume it only applies to sites they don’t use, so they don’t care how unreasonable the demands are.

Yet everything from HN to Reddit to YouTube is a social media platform. Do you really want to go through the process of ID verification for every single site you sign up for? Put everything behind a paywall so the website can confirm you’re an adult?

It’s weird to see how quickly HN likes to jump to extreme government regulation of online spaces these days.

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#53

Post by jay_kyburz » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 1:17 AM UTC

asddubs wrote: post #5

C50VGicCxmHC wrote: post #3

> These bills will likely face considerable constitutional challenges. Previous attempts to block minors from accessing Web sites via broad legislation, including the Child Online Protection Act, from 1998, have been struck down on First Amendment grounds. You might get farther instead of banning children from social media, ban all ads to children on social media. Every single ad impression shown to a child is a $1,0…

have fun uploading a copy of your passport every time you visit a new domain then.

I already plug my own birthday into all my kids accounts when I create them. A lot of sites wont even let you create an account for somebody less than 13

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#54

Post by whats_a_quasar » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 1:17 AM UTC

theK wrote: post #2

This is going to be an uphill battle. Not only is enforcement on a judiciary level extremely difficult (the kids as well as the companies have ways and reason to skirt jurisdiction on the borderless Internet) but you have the problem that addictive products will remain addictive even if there are better options out there. Personal opinion but I think the best way to counter the social media plague for young people wi…

You could have said the same thing about teenage smoking. It's addictive, hard to regulate away, but teen smoking regulations had demonstrable and massive health impacts. Cultural change is best, but governments have an obligation to improve public health. Particularly for minors, the vast majority of whom can't make informed decisions about addictive technology.

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#55

Post by judge2020 » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 1:18 AM UTC

armchairhacker wrote: post #49

I don't necessarily think it's an ethically bad idea, but "banning all children from all social media" is simply impractical for many reasons, including: - You essentially have to check some sort of ID and ban VPNs, banning online privacy which is BAD - The smartest kids are way more tech-savvy than the dumbest adults, so you may end up banning adults too, which is BAD - What will you do to children who get caught? J…

> - Banning children from specific social media sites (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram). This can be done through laws or just activism and lobbying to pressure the sites into banning children themselves

This is already the case, few will deal with the hurdles of COPPA, so most services require you to be 13 to sign up, and the platform has a general requirement to ban anyone they see that lied about their age.

(I've known two friends that had a Google account at 11/12 and got banned because they said "im 12" in comments; twitter also had a IIRC 2 year period where, if you changed your DOB and it reveals that you signed up when you were <13, your twitter account was suspended, and they only fixed this by requiring you delete tweets made when you were under 13)

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#56

Post by d110af5ccf » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 1:18 AM UTC

whats_a_quasar wrote: post #14

There is a real public health issue here. Teen mental health really has fallen off a cliff in the last 10 years, in every measure available. Self-reported rates of depression and anxiety disorders have more than doubled. Suicides of 10-14 year olds have more than doubled. Suicides among 14-19 year olds have gone up ~50%. Hospital admissions for non-fatal self harm in girls 10-14 have ~tripled. It's not just an increa…

> Lots of people on HN have a strong reaction against any attempt to regulate the internet, from generations of moral panics about new things.

No. That is absolutely not why and betrays precisely the lack of understanding about these things that causes such a response to begin with. Any time you find yourself dismissing widely held concerns you should take a step back and reevaluate if you haven't missed something. Perhaps your life experiences or priorities are different than these people who you encountered who had a "strong reaction"?

At least for myself, the primary reasons for such concerns are the frequency with which new regulations have historically resulted in dysfunction and abuse, proved entirely ineffective at solving the stated problem, or both.

> There are major freedom of speech issues, and there are lots of other technical and policy complications

Right here you acknowledge something which should be cause for very serious concern.

Also I think I'd object to your framing of "a public health crisis comparable to opioids". Much of that appears to be attributable to the side effects of the "war on drugs". At absolute minimum the vast majority of overdoses are clearly due to unreliable product quality which is simply not an issue for things purchased legally.

So really I'd like to avoid a second "war on drugs" type scenario that seeks to solve a social ill via government intervention, ultimately fails and makes the problem far worse in the process, creates various bureaucratic machinations that are incentivized to ensure future funding for themselves rather than outcomes that are actually beneficial to the general public, and erodes civil liberties in the process.

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#57

Post by PragmaticPulp » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 1:19 AM UTC

C50VGicCxmHC wrote: post #13

Xeoncross wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which will be very expensive for startups as well and ensure those with market dominance stay that way no matter how bad they get. This isn't sounding good.

Only startups that are based on advertising.

Or any startup that allows user-posted content, which could be an ad.

Hacker News would be gone. Or at least not allow open submissions and comments because they’d all have to be individually checked to confirm they aren’t ads.

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#58

Post by walrus01 » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 1:20 AM UTC

djha-skin wrote: post #37

A bill just passed in the state of Utah where I live banning children from social media unless they have their parents permission under 18 years of age. In addition, the parents must be provided with access to all of the children's messages and posts. This now means that Facebook has to implement some sort of "are you 18" thing. Don't know how they'll implement that, reminds me of a recent law around porn in Alabama.…

The Utah law is a back-door to Christian/Mormon fundamentalists who want to enforce religious doctrine and parental control over teenagers who are attempting to establish their own identities. This will be disastrous for any teenager in Utah who doesn't meet the local-region-socially-acceptable stereotype of a normal person, such as LGBTQ. All that I can see is even more ex-Mormon teenagers who cut off their parents they day they turn 18 and move to a city somewhere far away from Utah, at the earliest possible financially feasible moment.

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#59

Post by PragmaticPulp » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 1:23 AM UTC

tomrod wrote: post #28

debacle wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The majority of Instagram posts are ads, whether actual advertisements or not. This would be almost impossible to enforce.

Actually, it would be quite simple. - Record a social media site advertising to a user who is under XX years old. Complain to a portal. - Fine $1000 x complaint received each month. - Continue to do so until the service's accounts satisfy some sort of auditing standard. Come on, we do this for all kinds of things like credit card information and other data certifications.

> Fine $1000 x complaint received each month.

Ahh yes, fine companies $1000 for each complaint received. Surely nothing will go wrong and nobody would ever think to do this to sink their competitors? Surely the government overhead of enforcing this would be cheap?

It’s so weird to read all of these HN comments that can’t take basic realities of the internet and regulation into account.

Suggesting automatic $1000 fines to companies for “complaints received” is the most obviously exploitable system, which is bizarre to see on a site that usually brainstorms ways something can be exploited.

Websites like Hacker News would disappear because they can’t risk $1000 every time someone complains or if someone posts something that might be an ad. Reddit gone, forums gone, Discord gone.

The internet would become a walled garden of pre-approved corporate content, viewable only after you verify your ID and add a credit card to confirm that you're an adult.

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#60

Post by TheBozzCL » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 1:24 AM UTC

amatecha wrote: post #34

C50VGicCxmHC wrote: post #3

> These bills will likely face considerable constitutional challenges. Previous attempts to block minors from accessing Web sites via broad legislation, including the Child Online Protection Act, from 1998, have been struck down on First Amendment grounds. You might get farther instead of banning children from social media, ban all ads to children on social media. Every single ad impression shown to a child is a $1,0…

Eh, honestly, just go all the way and ban advertising altogether (I would be so happy if this happened, even though it obviously never will). Pretty willing to tank my karma to say this, I don't care, I think advertising is one of the biggest psychological pollutants in modern society and any possible benefit (??) is vastly outweighed by the cognitive waste incurred by all who are subjected to it.

I wholeheartedly agree with you here. It’s sad that I haven’t found a way to explain this view to others without sounding like a raving lunatic - which also speaks volumes about the state of the tracking/advertising industry.

Pihole via DoH plus uBlock has changed the internet so much for me, I literally can’t stand using other people’s devices. Let’s not even talk about watching TV, going to a sports bar is downright shocking.